Daniele Abbado's tame new production of Nabucco looks dreary next to Robert
Carsen's confident and engaing Falstaff at La Scala, writes Hugo Shirley.

La Scala’s decision to open its Verdi-Wagner season with Lohengrin unleashed a well-publicised storm in an espresso cup. The next two productions of its season, however, shift the balance back onto Verdi. Both are joint efforts with, among others, the Royal Opera House: Robert Carsen’s Falstaff was unveiled in London in May 2012 before arriving in Milan last month; Daniele Abbado’s brand-new Nabucco, which opened on Friday, will be shipped wholesale to Covent Garden in late March, with the same three principals and conductor. In mid April, London will see Plácido Domingo take over as the hubristic protagonist: another new baritone role for the former tenor, which Rupert Christiansen will review.

There was even more operatic swapping at La Scala for Falstaff, with Bryn Terfel joining conductor Daniel Harding to head a mainly Italian second cast for Verdi’s final masterpiece. Harding conducts with punch and clarity, and the orchestra plays magnificently. But, while Terfel’s performance is a masterclass in easy comic virtuosity, sharply pointed words and powerful, if sometimes forceful, vocalism, his Fat Knight falls short in warmth and wisdom; and, for all its marvellous detail, Carsen’s bright 1950s production misses the melancholy and magic of the final act.

If only some of Falstaff’s colour had seeped into Abbado’s drearily earnest and untheatrical Nabucco, however. Alison Chitty’s single set (a pit of grey sand initially filled with large rectangular slabs, a large wall to the left) and generic, grey refugee costumes are not enlivened much by Luca Scarzella’s back-wall video projections, which seem designed to make up for what’s lacking in a production with only fleeting touches of imagination. Updated to the second half of the 20th century, the staging is admirable for its seriousness, evoking Holocaust memorials in its imagery, but it hardly fits the rumbustiousness of Verdi’s early score. There’s no sense of the seductive trappings of power, either, on which Nabucco’s megalomania is surely built.

Related Articles

A largely excellent cast therefore seems wasted. while the pervasive anaemic feel infects Leo Nucci’s decent but tired-sounding Nabucco. Liudmyla Monastyrska’s Abigaille is gloriously secure, glowingly sung but dramatically rudimentary. Aleksandrs Antonenko – who won’t follow the production to London – is rather wasted as Ismaele, but Vitalij Kowaljow, although occasionally underpowered, provides a suave Zaccaria. Nicola Luisotti conducts efficiently, and the La Scala chorus is outstanding, particularly in a beautifully understated “Va pensiero”. But I doubt even Domingo will be able to bring the production itself to life.